Crosswire arrays have been developed in recent years with a primary focus in applications in information storage and retrieval. One type of crosswire array comprises a first set of conductive parallel wires and a second set of conductive parallel wires formed so as to intersect the first set of conductive wires. The intersections between the two sets of wires are separated by a thin film material or molecular component. A property of the material, such as the material's resistance, may be altered by controlling the voltages applied between individual wires from the first and second set of wires. Alteration of the materials resistance at an intersection may be performed so as to achieve a high resistance or low resistance state and thus store digital data. It is noted that crosswire arrays are occasionally referred to as crosspoint or crossbar arrays and these terms are used synonymously throughout this patent application.
Nagasubramanian et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,272,359 discloses such a crossbar array employing an organic conducting polymer as the material. Resistance variation from 1012 ohms to 107 ohms is reported to be achieved by applying a 10V pulse with a 100 ms duration. Nagasubramanian et al. discusses the uses of the crossbar array as forming a memory matrix for an artificial neural net.
Other materials useful for electrically programmable resistance are those with a perovskite structure such as magnetoresistive materials (U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,531,371 and 6,693,821), a variety of organic semiconductors (U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,746,971 and 6,960,783), and silver-selenide/chalcogenide laminate films (U.S. Pat. No. 6,867,996).
Kuekes et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,128,214 uses crossbars applicable at nanometer scales by employing molecular components as a bridging component between the wires. Such nanoscale crossbars have been disclosed as useful tools in molecular electronics capable of performing a variety of tasks including signal routing, multiplexing, and performing simple logic functions in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,256,767, 6,314,019, 6,518,156, 6,586,965, 6,812,117, 6,854,092, 6,858,162, 6,870,394, 6,880,146, 6,898,098, 6,900,479, 6,919,740, 6,963,077, 7,073,157, and U.S. Patent Application 2005/0258872. Molecular crossbar arrays used in neural networks is disclosed in U.S. Patent Application 2004/0150010. Manufacturing of molecular crossbar arrays is taught in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,248,674, 6,432,740, 6,835,575, 6,846,682, and 6,998,333.
Examples of non-patent literature concerned with molecular crossbar arrays include Ziegler et al. “A Case for CMOS/nano Co-design,” Lee et al. “CMOL Crossnets as Pattern Classifiers,” and Das et al. “Architectures and Simulations for Nanoprocessor Systems Integrated On the Molecular Scale.” Reinhold Koch provides a discussion of programmable crossbar arrays formed from ferroelectric material in Scientific American Vol. 293, No. 2 pgs. 56-63.
Examples of other crosswire array architectures that use direct mechanical connection using nanotubes rather than variable resistance films are found in Segal et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,919,592 and Lieber et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,781,166 as well as numerous other issued and pending patents assigned to Nantero.
Additional teachings regarding new applications of crosswire architectures may be found in the copending applications mentioned in the cross-reference to related applications section above. These patent applications collectively provide teachings of a variety of configurations for crosswire arrays applicable to reconfigurable electronics, pattern analysis, waveform analysis and shaping, communications, control systems, arithmetic processing units, electron beam lithography, electron microscopy, radiation and visual sensors, radiation and light generators, visual displays, and other applications.
For a variety of these applications it would be useful to have a compact electrical interconnection mechanism to transmit signals between different crosswire arrays that are provided for different purposes. Also, in the case that the crosswire array is provided at nanometer scales, it would be useful to have an electrical interface system between the nanoscale wires of the crosswire array and microscale wires of MOSFET or other more conventional electronic components.